3 Idiots - Myth Busted!

No I am not referring to the chetan bhagat controversy. Honestly I dont give a damn. I enjoyed the movie, Aamir rocks and its great entertainment with loads of message without getting all preachy up your a$$.

However there are some technical glitches. In two scenes, it is shown that a person urinating on an electrified device gets his manhood electrocuted. This is not possible. How do i know ? There was an episode on the popular television series Mythbusters (on Discovery) where they test exactly this urban legend. You can read about the myth at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Patrick_O%27Malley.

Currently I am trying to get my hands on the episode. I had watched it long long back but i vividly remember how they had done it. They made a human model and filled it with urine (fresh out of a real human bladder). They had already measured the pressure with which a normal human being can urinate and then adjusted the model's "bladder" to that pressure. The model was finally made to urinate on an electrified metal strip. Result. No electrocution. Then they gradually increased the pressure to the point where electrocution finally takes place. However the pressure at which this takes place will take super human effort.

Conclusion. You cannot get an electric shock from urinating on an elctrified object (unless you are superman, spiderman or Shakti-man and really pissed off)

Further conclusion. It is not surprising that no reports have come in of children/teenagers getting electrocuted due to such pranks being played by their peers after watching the movie. I am sure they have tried, and thankfully failed.

Cheers
Rishi